


Beautiful Day

by The_Lake_King



Series: 2021 Valentine's Prompts [6]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Bittersweet, Flashbacks, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Morning After, Referenced Suicide Attempt, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:02:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29234208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Lake_King/pseuds/The_Lake_King
Summary: Prompt 6. "What are you smiling about?"Thomas returns to Downton after a night with Richard.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis
Series: 2021 Valentine's Prompts [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2137182
Comments: 14
Kudos: 82
Collections: Well I love you: Valentines for Thomas Barrow





	Beautiful Day

**Author's Note:**

> I took some serious liberties with the wording of this prompt; you'll probably understand why when you get there. I think it fulfills the spirit of the thing though, so I hope you'll forgive me.

Thomas flitted into his room like a shadow at dawn, feeling the electricity crackle in the air. It wasn’t the first time he had snuck back to his room in the morning, and it would not be the last, but he couldn’t remember ever feeling so light. He wasn’t convinced that his feet were touching the ground. Off came his grey suit, on went his butler’s blacks. He checked his hair in the mirror but didn’t touch it. He might have to start buying Richard’s preferred brand of pomade.

It was still some time before breakfast. Thomas twirled about his room like some lovestruck girl before he settled at the window, watching light bleed into the sky. A storm was brewing on the horizon, dark purple and roiling like the mouth of a great sea creature. His hand would ache later, and there would no doubt be complications to his day from cooped-up children and muddy dogs, but right there and then, it looked beautiful. Fantastical. Something he would have gawped at from his garret window as a child, imagining it swirling around his street and carrying them all away. He opened the window and let the smell wash over him.

He heard Andy walk down the hall to the bathroom, and the yard door open and shut outside. The house was waking up, but he felt oddly alone. No, not quite. He was used to feeling alone, and he didn’t anymore. Rather, he felt connected with somebody who was not contained by these walls. The sky stretched between them, from the house to the village. Richard would be driving away from it now, back to York. He would be looking at that same sky, that same purple storm. Thomas felt his way along the necklace of bruises hidden beneath his clothing.

_“Did I hurt you?” Richard whispered, tracing the blooming marks in the lamplight._

_Thomas kissed between his brows until that worried frown smoothed into amusement. “Only in the best way. I bruise easily.”_

_“Better be more careful with you,” Richard purred, pressing his lips and tongue to each spot that he had ravaged hours earlier._

_“Please don’t.”_

The one just beneath his left collarbone hurt deliciously when he pressed on it. Richard was far away, and would be further away come tomorrow, but these would last a week at least. A whole week, before he had to content himself once again with a pendant and memories. But oh God, what memories he had now.

_“This is what I’ve dreamed of,” Richard breathed, heavy and ragged. “This is what I—fuck, Thomas, ah—what I think about when I touch meself.”_

_Thomas rolled his hips down with almost manic pleasure as he watched his lover come apart._

He pressed his cheek to the cool glass. It was time to go down. He said goodbye to the sky and sent a kiss on the wind before he shut the window. He imagined the kiss flying all the way down the road and ducking in the window of that borrowed car. It found Richard pressing his back into the seat, trying to sear the nail-marks more deeply into his skin. It stayed with him on the way back to London, and the days after, until all marks, all scents, all evidence was gone. Only then did it give itself over to him. To make it all last as long as possible. To let him know that they would see each other again. To tell him not to worry.

_He had warned Richard about his scars. Even so, he had expected some measure of awkwardness, perhaps even politely veiled distaste. He hadn’t expected tears._

_“You make me smile so much, y’know,” Richard whispered, his eyes shining. “You make me laugh. Every time you write, or when you call. Most times it’s not even that you’re tryin’ to be funny. You just understand. You see people so clearly. An’ I can tell you everythin’ even when I can’t tell you everythin’. You know what I mean?”_

_“I think so.” Thomas swallowed. Richard had been so smooth in their first meeting, in those first few letters. It had only been more recently that the cracks started to show. The fragility, the stress, the desire for invisibility while wanting so desperately to be seen. The love of solitude. The fear of loneliness. The nightmares. Thomas treasured every fault-line as he found it, cradled the whole in his palms, shocked, when he realized that he was as much a lifeline for Richard as Richard was for him._

_“I’m so glad I got to meet you, Thomas.”_

_“So am I.”_

He made his way downstairs and took his seat at the table, fielding the chatter of ‘Good morning, Mr. Barrow’ and ‘How was York?’ and ‘You must’ve got in late.’ On another day, he would have been annoyed as all hell. Today, they couldn’t irritate him if they tried. Nothing so trivial could ruin a day that had begun in the warm embrace of his sweetheart.

_“I wish I didn’t have to go.”_

_“I wish you didn’t either,” Richard murmured, petting his hair. “Maybe…”_

_“Maybe what?”_

_“Maybe one day, we can wake up together and no one’ll have to go anywhere.”_

_Thomas picked up his head and peered at his partner in the dark._

_“I know it’s much too soon for all of that,” Richard said quickly, sounding more awake and over-correcting into his upstairs voice, “I mean, we’ve met twice, but one day we could, I don’t know…Christ, ignore me.”_

_“I didn’t write to you every other day for six months because I though y’ had a nice bum, Richard,” Thomas said softly._

_“I love you.” It seemed to come out of him almost against his will, like a sneeze._

_“I love you too,” Thomas whispered, grinning._

_Richard kissed him, long and sweet in the early-morning darkness. “You make me act out, Mr. Barrow, y' know that? I thought I was supposed to be the sensible one.”_

_“Well I suppose we’re fucked, then.”_

_Richard threw back his head and laughed, Adam’s apple jumping under pale skin in a stripe of moonlight. Thomas wanted that image tattooed on the backs of his eyelids._

“Were you even listenin’, Mr. Barrow?” Mrs. Patmore demanded.

“Hm?”

A few of the staff giggled down the table. Carson never would have tolerated it. Thomas didn’t give a damn.

“You didn’t hear a word ’o that, did you? And why’re you sat there grinnin’ like a Cheshire cat anyway?”

“It’s a beautiful day, Mrs. Patmore,” he said airily.

Thunder roared like a beast a second before rain started lashing the windows. The cook’s eyebrows traveled to her frizzy hairline. Thomas shrugged and sipped his tea, still smiling.


End file.
